New 1.14 RC date?

[Andrew Bennetts]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Andrew Bennetts writes:
> 
>  > Apologies for snipping and thus ignoring much of your reply, but I think
>  > most of the points I'd make have already been made in this thread at once
>  > already.
> 
> The only point that you snipped that I'd like to see discussion of is
> my off-the-cuff guess at what the release cycle should look like, and
> specifically, that a feature should land *early* in the cycle rather
> than right before rolling the distribution media.

We already do tend to prefer earlier in the cycle rather than later for
disruptive changes.  It's not an iron-clad rule.

A recent example of that is this patch, where the suggestion is to land it
at the start of the 1.15 cycle rather than immediately:

<http://bundlebuggy.aaronbentley.com/project/bzr/request/%3C49CB8701.8000808%40internode.on.net%3E>

That's a fairly common occurrence, and one of the reasons why I think
time-based releases with a fairly short period work well.

>  > My point here, which you seem to have missed, is that "ready for
>  > release" has several inputs,
> 
> No, I didn't miss it.  I'm deliberately ignoring it because you're
> absolutely right, but it's irrelevant to my point.  My point, which
> you may have missed, is that I am delegating that *technical*
> judgment[1] to the contributor of the code, who presumably is taking
> those inputs into account.

If my point is irrelevant to yours, I'm not sure why you replied to my mail
to Matthew in the first place!

Also, you say “contributor” as if it's one person, but I almost (if not all)
core developers have contributed to the brisbane-core code.  Ian's taken on
the job of driving the landing it on bzr.dev, but that doesn't mean he's to
blame for all of the code :)

[...]
>  > Or if that doesn't reassure you: happy users bolster my ego, and unhappy
>  > users deflate it.  It's simply not in my interest, or my ego's interest, to
>  > have a bad release.  Not even in the service of a hopefully better one down
>  > the track.
> 
> Strawman.  Of course you don't have a stake in producing a bad
> release.  But people, and developers are people, are very much capable
> of being excessively optimistic about the probability of success and
> the size of the damage if something does go wrong.  And they tend to
> completely discount any damage to the process itself.

It's one thing to say “I think your judgement is wrong.”  But when you're
talking about ego, you're also saying “I think you are being selfish” and I
strongly disagree with that claim.  I may well be wrong (as you say I am a person,
and people make mistakes, and I'm no exception), but I do not think I (or
any other developer) is being selfish here.

> A one-month release cycle is extremely ambitious.  The Bazaar team has
> done an excellent job of keeping to that schedule so far, but it's
> only been a half-dozen or so, right?  But it's human nature to

Ian has already corrected this.  When we broke from the usual monthly
schedule for the 1.6 release it was a mistake, and one that none of us wish
to repeat.

[...]
> "Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules."  Are they?

The next line of the Zen of Python is “Although practicality beats purity.”,
so I'm not sure that quote is really a strong basis for you to argue from ;)

-Andrew.